So I was walking down Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in the late morning after a meeting and got a call from Bloomberg TV. Apparently, two different stories that featured two of the market reports I author – published by Douglas Elliman – were the number one and two most emailed on the Bloomberg Terminals worldwide. They wanted to talk about them.

So I took a left and walked over Bloomberg HQ. Got to speak with Vonnie Quinn and Shery Ahn on set – who knew how to make an interview go well.

This is a 2-minute clip of the 5-minute interview, but you’ll get the gist. I’ll expand on this discussion tomorrow at 2 pm when my weekly Housing Note is released.

For those of you that read my weekly Housing Notes, you’ll know I refer to 2014 as “Peak New Development” for the Manhattan housing market. “Peak Luxury” works as a label too.

Bloomberg news broke the story that a $50M+ condo purchased in 2014 just sold at a foreclosure auction for $36,000,0000. There were five bidders. It’s been the fourth resale since the market peaked and the sixth overall – so I created a graphic of all the resales to show how they fared before and after the 2014 “peak.”

The story reached #1 as the most read on the 350k± Bloomberg Terminals worldwide yesterday.

It is important to remember that there are still a fair amount of units remaining that are priced at 2014 levels. Extell, the developer, has their work cut out for them to compete with current market conditions.

While One57 is a symbolic poster child for the new dev phenomenon, it is not a proxy for the entire new development market. Some projects were priced more reasonably at the peak, hence they haven’t fallen as much. In addition, the quality and design of each project can vary greatly. One thing is clear – since the 2014 peak, investors don’t have the same potential for big and fast returns on flips – their initial strategy was to buy early and realize instant equity as the sponsor increased the offering prices. That scenario no longer applies. Since the market has more choices for buyers now than it did back during peak, One57 is no longer seen as a “new” building like it was back then.

CNBC picked up the story – My firm and I get a shoutout during the conversation on Sqawkbox which was pretty cool.

The New York Times created another super cool graphic in their new Calculator column, based on my idea. In the fall of 2015 I observed a massive surge of sales in Westchester County (north of NYC for those not familiar with our area). However median sales price was nearly flat during this period. This was phenomenon repeated in all of the counties that surround NYC – except for NJ since I don’t cover that market yet but anecdotally I believe the same phenomenon is occurring there. I believe this moment was the point where the affordability challenge became so severe that renters and move up buyers had to move out of the city.

Specifically, Brooklyn showed a surge in median sales price from 2009 with a modest growth in sales. Westchester reflected the opposite patterns of Brooklyn. Westchester county sales boomed over the same period while the growth in median sales price was much more tepid.

The Artelligence Podcast unpacks the mysteries of the global art market through interviews with collectors, dealers, auction house specialists, lawyers, art advisors and the myriad individuals who make the art market a beguiling mixture of sublime beauty and commercial acumen.

I’m liking the new goodies in the New York Times real estate section, especially this week, and not because the most recent market report on the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens rental market for Douglas Elliman was featured. No, really.

When compared to the rest of the U.S. housing market, Aspen Colorado is a really a niche luxury market with an overall median sales price of $1,407,500 in the second quarter of 2016. This was 27% higher than Manhattan in New York City – with a current condo reportedly under contract for around $250 million – whose market-wide median sales price was $1,108,500 in the same period.

If you use the article’s June year to date residential sales volume for the entire county, it is clear that 2015 was an outlier. However because most real estate brokers on commission tend to look at the market in the short run, there was an expectation that the sales trend from 2014 to 2015 would continue into 2016. Because of the uncertainty described in the article, Aspen buyers – who are by definition “luxury” buyers – are clearly pulling back (and in many U.S. luxury markets).

I author a market report that covers Aspen for Douglas Elliman’s market report series, which I began writing in 194. The year over year drop in Aspen 2Q16 sales was 52.5%. Here is the breakdown of sales at the high end:

Based on the behavior of the luxury market in high end enclaves like Manhattan, The Hamptons, Greenwich, Miami and Los Angeles that are also covered in our report series, the prevailing pattern for housing remains “soft at the top” and it looks like Aspen is no exception. The impact of the 2012 on Aspen sales didn’t seem as pronounced as this year if you believe that is a significant cause. However my theory is that the heavy luxury volume of the prior year (2015) may have poached demand from 2016, exacerbated by the 2016 election and other items of uncertainty like Brexit, the U.S. economy and the financial markets.

Follow Jonathan

Newsletter Signup:

If you haven't already, sign up for
'Housing Notes' to receive weekly insights and research.

First Name

Last Name

Email Address

About Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller is President and CEO of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consulting firm he co-founded in 1986. He is a state-certified real estate appraiser in New York and Connecticut, performing court testimony as an expert witness in various local, state and federal courts. He holds the Counselors of Real Estate (CRE) and Certified Relocation Professional (CRP) designations. He is an Appraiser “A” Member of the Real Estate Board of New York and a member of Relocation Appraisers and Consultants, Inc.Learn More...

Subscription Service Coming Soon

You'll be able to choose from an array of robust housing metrics compiled using research developed during the preparation of our market report series. Expanded significantly from prior offerings, use this resource to build charts and custom data tables or leverage your own information for more powerful research and presentations.

In the meantime, here is a small sample of the aggregated data we will provide.

Matrix Blog

I’ve been following Dan Gershburg‘s Twitter handle for quite a while and found it to be a great resource for pretty much everything. He’s a real estate attorney and we got to know each other a little bit over the… Read More